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but WHAT ABOUT LEOPARD?????

I have a sneaking suspicion that these units will be shipping with Leopard!!

The Revolution Will Be TV'd!!!!

@Jim - Leopard will be out sometime in the next weeks! Stop asking that, and have a little patience!

Sorry dude, but I just cannot wait for Leopard!

BTW, I got one of those new Aluminum Wireless Keyboards yesterday. All I can say is WOW! They are sooooo cool!

@ Jim

Patience my padawan learner....

If this is true then I will buy into AppleTV. This may usurp Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

I hope they also move towards a subscription based service for tv shows and movies kinda like Netflix. They also need to improve their selection of movies too. When I go through their movie site its nothing but R rated trash after trash.

What about bringing the standard video shows/movies to Canada first.

I want Heroes and The Office on my iTunes.

Would be nice if they added WiFi iTunes Store to tv also.

This would be awesome since it will mean I don't have to shell out $500 for a soon-to-be-worthless-brick BluRay or HD-DVD player.

Now, so long as you can BUY the HD movies as well as rent...

and they need to have the upcoming Blade Runner release.

I'm hoping Battlestar Galactica episodes will be offered in HD. It's filmed in HD but, incomprehensibly, Sci-Fi Channel STILL won't switch to HD.

Maybe they're not making enough money on their s***ty "mutant monster of the week" B-movies.

@Nerd
BBC America are switching to HD next Jan. I think this means the cable / satellite companies have opened the door for the switch. Almost all of SciFi new programing is in HD. Same can be said for a lot of other channels too. It's the distributors that have been lagging either because of lack of bandwidth or need to upgrade their systems.

Finally I may be able to get the most out of my 2 year old HDTV. That experience is one of the reasons why I am waiting to buy into Apple TV or BluRay / HDDVD.

CNBC and yankees .....the rest i would get from Apple TV.
but intili can watch CNBC and yankees i can't dump apple TV

@Moo

Apparently a price drop on the Sony PS3 is "imminent." It's a great deal even if you're not a gamer and buy it just for the Blu-Ray drive.

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=138048&lid=VideoGameNews&pos=2

*****
Sony says 40GB PS3 announcement 'imminent'
by Blake Snow | 10/04/2007 | 9:38:39 AM PST

While avoiding specifics, a Sony spokesman reputedly told the AFP that an announcement regarding the rumored $399 PS3 will occur at any moment.

The statement comes after French newspaper Les Echos (a subsidiary of the Financial Times) reported on Thursday that Sony will introduce the unconfirmed 40GB PS3 at a $399 price point in order to boost holiday sales.

Consistent with similar reports, Les Echos says the 80GB Motorstorm bundle will drop by 100 euros ($100 in the U.S.).

"A Sony spokesman would not confirm the figures cited by Les Echos but said an announcement was 'imminent,'" the AFP said.

^^^^^^

Oh yeah, Amazon is also offering 5 free Blu-Ray movies with the purchase of a PS3.

If this price drop happens, essentially for $399 you will get:

PS3 w/ 40 gig hard drive and built in Wifi and Blutetooth.
Blu-ray drive with full 1080p support.
A gaming console w/ bluetooth remote
5 free Blu-Ray movies. ($150 value.)

It's looking mighty tempting even though I'm not a gamer.

This is what I have been waiting for. If Apple starts to offer HD content on Itunes then it is game over.

"They also need to improve their selection of movies too. When I go through their movie site its nothing but R rated trash after trash."

-------

Did you happen to miss the Disney catalog?

I think what they need to do is extend the itunes store, like they have done on the Touch and iPhone, so that I can buy(or better yet rent) my movie or TV show directly from my living room.

720p is NOT High Definition, it is barely better than the Eurpoean PAL standard used for over 30 years.

True HD will never be implemented due to market greed. In that context however the "HD" term should only be applied to 1080p resolutions.

Canada, Canada, Canada

you are right. but in Canada there are no shows to buy.
I have no idea why they bother selling it in Canada

How long will it take to download a HD movie with a DSL connection?

Voltaic says, "720p is NOT High Definition, it is barely better than the Eurpoean PAL standard used for over 30 years."

Bullzune! 720p IS HD, according to the ATSC standards... Full HD or whatever is just marketing. If you're going to say something at least specify that you don't consider it HD, but when you say that it's NOT HD, many people who read that will take it for fact, when it is not fact.

"How long will it take to download a HD movie with a DSL connection?"

A two hour 1080p movie with multi-channel audio could take up to 14-16 hours with a standard 1.5 DSL connection.

Now do you see why there is no HD in the iTunes store yet.

Schmluss, totally agree with you. 720P is an HD standard whether or not Europe has had it or not. 1080P is just a higher resolution HD format but 720P is HD and that is a fact.

720P is very weak. Check out the HD channels on any cable TV lineup at night. Only one or two lame shows are not the full 1080 signal. On a HD TV, the 720 resolution doesn't even fill the frame. On a HD computer monitor, now very cheap, a 720 signal is like a small box.

Now, if Apple can get some incredible, master quality image with fantastic compression, maybe it can be uprezzed to 1080 very well without anyone knowing.

"How long will it take to download a HD movie with a DSL connection?"

A two hour 1080p movie with multi-channel audio could take up to 14-16 hours with a standard 1.5 DSL connection.

Now do you see why there is no HD in the iTunes store yet."

Thats what I thought. Downloading songs from itunes is one thing, but big file movies is just to much right now. This living your life digitally and doing everything on the internet is getting to be to much. I'm getting alittle burnt out.

I have said it before and will say it again and again, AppleTV sucks! If (big if) Apple puts HD on iTunes you can bet that Apple Inc will make you buy a new AppleTv unit to get the HD. It will most likely be called AppleTV HD (a 2nd gen unit). OR Apple could just scrap the AppleTV thing because it sucks anyway.

Please don't confuse HDTV pixel counts with monitor pixel counts, they are two different things. Also, cable channels are 1080i, not 1080p, so 720p actually has more picture info than 1080i. It may look better than 720p depending on your monitor resolution.

Reply to schmluss....From Wikipedia:

"The term "PAL" is often used informally to refer to a 625-line/50 Hz (576i, principally European) television system, and to differentiate from a 525-line/60 Hz (480i, principally North American/Central American/Japanese) "NTSC" system. Accordingly, DVDs are labelled as either "PAL" or "NTSC" (referring informally to the line count and frame rate) even though technically the European disks do not have PAL composite colour. NTSC, by contrast does define the video line and frame format."

In the early '80s a then small company Called General Instruments introduced the 1st and only "digital" high definition broadcast system, all others were analog and of lesser quality. The standard was of much higher resolution that the highest available now ( I forgot, its been too long, but it was in the 1300+). The GI digital format was immediately adopted.

The US government gave billions of dollars worth of bandwith for "free" to the broadcasting industry under specific conditions, which were never met, foremost they were to use the full HD bandwith. The broadcasters faught to lower the standard for the definition of "HD" so they could use the rest of the bandwith broadband for other forms of broadcasting. In other words, they invented the so called HD 720" and "1080i and 1080p" resolution which falls far short of anything that could have been called "High Definition". Fortunately the better of the compromises, 1080p, seems to have won out.

The industry can force (and have been) a lesser standar to be accepted, but it still does not make it so.

The ATSC standards say that 720p is High Definition. No matter how the standard was adopted, the fact remains that 720p is HD.

Oh well, I'm glad you are happy then schmiuss

I'll stick to Blu-ray and HD-DVD for now. I'm not interested in my movies being on a hard drive that will eventually fail and I don't want to have to make back-ups.

Got a question. If Apple comes out with a new version of AppleTV sometime in the future will the movies that are purchased in the beginning have to be repurchased ????? Something like that has happened before with Apple.

I'll stick to physical media thank you.

I am happy, voltaic. I just want to set the facts straight. PAL is 576 interlaced lines. So really you only have 288 lines of information in a full frame. Interlaced means that every other frame has even or odd lines. The minimum HD standard (720p) has 720 progressive lines of information. Progressive means that all of the lines are in each frame. 720p has almost twice as much picture information than PAL. So PAL is not "barely better than" 720p.

Thanks for everyone telling the "720p is not HD" people the truth. 720p is very much an HD standard. I love 720p. It's beautiful. Truth is, at a normal screen size at a normal viewing distance, your eyes can't make out the diference between 720p, 1080i or 1080p. There is actually less information in a 1080i picture than a 720p picture. Plus, you won't be seeing a 1080i broadcast standard anytime soon. TV is my industry...I'm not making this up. 720p HD on Apple TV means I'm placing my order.

Unless you have a screen bigger than 50" or 60", even a discriminating eye could not tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. Furthermore, unless you have a >50" sony xbr4 LCD panel or Pioneer 5080HD plasma, don't even worry about 1080p since your TV's not top-of-the-line anyway.

I'm all for it ... however, Apple TV needs to support proper Surround Sound (Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 5.1) before I'll consider it above Blu-Ray ... and currently, none of the Video Formats / Containers that the Apple TV supports can carry proper Surround Sound.

If Apple updates the Apple TV OS to include true support for Surround Sound in the File Formats, and deliver a minimum of 720p (and 1080i/1080p), then I'll consider it as a true HD replacement (assuming that the Movie Studio's will release the latest movies in HD format in iTunes).

Also ... it's about time Apple released TV Shows and Movies here in Australia. Until that is done, the Apple TV is no more than an overpriced Movie Trailer Viewer.

As a matter of fact, hedgehogfrenzy, my eyes can tell the difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p. I have a 60" HDTV 1080p and on a screen that size, the difference is dramatic. The only way for me to see full 1080p at the moment is through my PS3 Blu-Ray player.

I seriously doubt that Apple's idea of HD is full 1080p. Too bad there are so many "standards" for HD. We are lucky enough to live in a time where we can watch full HD, but the medium which carries it mostly falls short of the bandwidth requirements.

Oh, yeah, and I want BSG in HD, too!

its funny, right now i have an AppleTV and it looks great and runs fine, and you lot are whining to get bigger files....

so buy a full HD movie and download it over DSL for 10-20 hours, then upload it to your TV for what, another 6 hours, and then you are ready to go!

all to get what? is the picture REALLY that much better? yeah, i can see the difference, but come on......

I agree, visual media from the iTunes Store needs to be sold in Canada too! For now, I am still old fashioned and prefer buying physical CDs and ripping them at a very high quality, so there is no loss in quality. Same applies for movies on DVD!

720p from Apple's movie clips can easily beat broadcast 1080i in picture quality. While broadcasts theoretically have more lines, they also have multiple layers of inferior MPEG 2 data compression, and the picture gets interlaced and then de-interlaced.

720p broadcasts are nowhere near what 720p ought to look like - you can't judge the standard from that. The stations that use it are cutting data rates in half or less so that they can broadcast more SD channels.

Of course Blue-ray's high data rates will look best, but with sky-high costs, a format war, and limited disk availability, it may not matter.

Doctor Who is still being shot in 576p. The word is that this is because the show uses so much CGI that high def would be too slow.